Never Good With Introductions
by YogaForever
Summary: I want you to be my boyfriend.


**Never Good With Introductions **

_By: Sweet Valentine Vampire _

"You're Sonic the Hedgehog, aren't you?"

And he turned around. It was cold outside -snowing- the beginning of December. He regarded me from behind his dark sunglasses and nodded, slowly, tightening the scarf around his neck. I walked closer and he stood his ground on the sidewalk. It was sunset.

"I've seen you on TV. And it sounds really, really weird but I was actually happy when I heard Robotnik was attacking the downtown part of the city. Even when I saw the explosions on the news, because I knew you were coming.

There was a flick of some emotion on his face for a second. He asked: "You were happy? Why? Because you knew I was on my way to help?"

"Not necessarily...I was mostly excited because now I had a chance to meet you!"

He frowned at that. "Oh-oh yeah?"

"Yeah!" I beamed right back at him. "I have a _huge_ crush on you. I really, really wanted to meet you. You're just so brave and heroic and so, you know, so sexy." I giggled, blushing because I actually had the guts to say it.

"Yeah?" He leaned his chin away, smiling smugly. His sexiness levels spiked way high. "What do you want out of me kid?"

So I told him. And his smile grew. There was something dark about that smile but it only made me tingle. He told me to come with him. I immediately obeyed. I would do anything he told me to.

"I was never very good with introductions."

"Then don't tell me your name. It's as simple as that."

It wasn't until much later that I figured out he was using me. Honestly, I never thought he would take advantage of me like that. I'd seen him so many times on TV, and so many times in magazines, and every time he looked into the eye of the camera and every time I felt he was looking in my eyes and he would smile. Smile like the sunrise after a long, cold winter night and his smile warmed me up from my head to me toes. Those eyes and that smile told me I belonged with him.

So no, I didn't think he was using me like he did a hundred different girls in a hundred different cities. When he brought me to his motel room with the weird smell and peeling wallpaper, I could only beam and bounce around everywhere I went. Mina from school was always saying she'd slept with Sonic but everyone knew she was lying. When I told them all he was my boyfriend - they were going to be SO jealous.

His back was to me. He took off his scarf and gloves and set them down on the dresser in front of him. He slid the sunglasses off his face and asked, "how old are you?"

"Fifteen." I breathed, taking off my coat and scarf and gloves. He wasn't cold - so I wouldn't be either!

"Old enough." He grumbled and took off his jacket. "It's pretty strange, yeah? How happy you were that I was coming."

"Well, I love you." I said the honest truth and he turned around. And it shocked me - how very sad he looked.

"No you don't." He told me, his eyes dark and catlike and pained in the dim lighting.

"Yes. I do." I told him, blinking slowly. "I've always loved you. Ever since I first saw you."

"Well, stop." He bit, glaring. He looked away. "Last girl who told me that..." I thought he meant Amy Rose but I didn't ask because he'd come closer and put his arms around me. "Since you want me to be your boyfriend - I'm going to kiss you now."

And he put his mouth to mine and kissed me so deeply. Without a sound. I was on the bed in a second and he was undressing me and running his hands over my skin. He ran his fingers briskly through my hair, messing it up and kissed my neck. I moaned into him and held him tighter.

Soon, he had me tangled in the sheets with him, naked. When I screamed, "God, I love you!' he stopped. Everything was over. And I was panting. He rolled off of me.

"Why?" I panted, sitting up. "Why did you stop?"

He stared into my eyes, laying beside me. A hundred different feelings ran through his eyes. Not a single one of them was love, I only realized later.

"You really just wanted me to fuck you, huh?" He said.

"Excuse me?" I pulled the sheet up to cover me.

"You don't care about anything else, right? Girls like you don't care about anything else." He chuckled darkly, moving away from me, staring at me with such cold contempt that it burned. "You girls don't care about anything else but fulfilling all these fantasies about having sex with me and being my girlfriend, huh? You think you love me?"

He threw his feet over the edge of the bed and did up his fly again. He pulled a box of cigarettes from his back pocket and a lighter from the front pocket. "You think you love me?" He repeated, lighting himself up. And then, without even looking at me, he screamed: "You think you even CAN!? You don't fucking KNOW me! Or why I fight Robotnik."

I felt sick to my stomach. "But...I do love you. And you fight Robotnik because- because it's the right thing to do, right? Because you want to help people?"

He took three drags quickly, his back pulsing with the breaths he took. He went into a tangent, his voice strained and painful, "Maybe I have nothing better to do. Maybe I was just a little kid living in a little town when -one day!- Robotnik comes along and blows everything to hell! Blows up things that the news reports but doesn't _do anything about_. Maybe I was the kid who lost my whole damn family, left wondering 'why am I alive?' I was the fast one. The 'lucky' one. Just really _fucking _lucky that I never manage to get myself killed. No one came in time to make a damn bit of a difference to me, but they were heroes."

My whole body was shaking. I was terrified of him. He sounded crazy. Like he'd snap and turn around and choke me at any minute. Or maybe like he'd hurt himself.

"Is any of this making a single connection in your goddam head?" He got to his feet and faced me. He took a drag from his cigarette and his eyes glistened in the dark. "When the news came on, reporting that Robotnik was attacking and you were happy? HAPPY!? You fucking, heartless bitch! Do you even realize what you were saying? You were happy people were dying because it meant your hero was coming."

"But, you kissed me." I squeaked, tears falling down my face. It was hot and I just knew I looked hideous, snot and tears running down my face. My whole body trembled harder. "If you hate me so much - why would you kiss me? Why would you - ?"

"Oh, shut the fuck up." Sonic growled. He took another, deeper drag from the cigarette. "You disgust me."

"I DON'T CARE!" I shouted, and pulled the sheets up all around me. It was freezing in the room and he was making it colder somehow. I couldn't stop shaking. "Why are you doing this to me?" I whined. "SAYING this to me?"

"Because you were happy to see me -even though people died- you were happy because I was going to be there and you wanted to meet me."

"Of course I wanted to meet you! You're a hero! You save people every day - for nothing. No reason at all. You just help people and that seemed so noble and brave and inspiring. I wanted to meet you because I help people to - to _emulate_ you." I used the sheet to wipe away my mascara-stained tears. "I love you because you're so kind. I wanted to meet you because I love you and I wanted you to be my boyfriend because I thought we'd get along."

"Why? Because we both like _helping people_?" He did quotations with his fingers and mocked my voice. Then, with another breath of nicotine he said, "that's just the thing, princess. I help people, yeah-sure-okay, but I don't do it without a reason. I'm doing this all for revenge. I won't stop ruining everything Robotnik does to _get back at him _for what he _did _to me. I want to avenge that helpless kid version of me. I don't want anyone else to ever go through what I did and I want Robotnik to suffer. It's not about being kind. It's about - about fixing things."

"But, that's still kind." I sniff.

"See it that way if you want to."

"I'm sorry." I hung my head, holding the blankets to me tighter like I would disappear in them.

"Don't be." He shook his head and put out the cigarette butt on the night stand. "You didn't know."

"But I disgust you."

"Only 'cause you weren't thinking. Only 'cause of what you said. Just watch what you say, alright?"

There was a beat of silence.

"Jesus Christ," he said. "I hate feeling guilty over making girls cry." He shook his head, irritated with himself. "I've inspired you to help people?" He said, taking out another cigarette. My stomach curled at the sight of it. I hated the smell of nicotine.

"Mhm." I nodded, still sniffling from my sob session. " I volunteer at the VA hospital. I want to help people - any way I can."

"Last little girl who said that..." His voice trailed and he licked his lips, then took a drag.

"Do you mean Cream?" His eyes flicked at me and I saw the sadness and pain return to them. He just nodded. "She and Tails died in a battle for Station Square."

"Two years on the dot." Said Sonic.

"I'm so sorry." There was another beat of silence. "Do you miss them?"

"Who?"

"Your friends? Your-your family?"

More silence claims the space and I shiver, cold because I'm naked beneath the thin sheets. Sonic turned his back on me to stare at the wall again. With him looking the other way, I got up and grabbed my cloths. Quickly, I dressed and continued to watch him watch the wall.

With a plume of smoke rising above him like a halo, he answered, voice low, "yeah. Every goddam day."

"But, what about Amy? Where's she? Did-did you guys break up or something?" I asked, holding my scarf in my gloved hands.

Finally, Sonic looked back at me. His eyes glistened more than ever and when he brought the burning cigarette to his mouth, I saw the tears in his eyes reflected the gold and orange. In a bitter voice he said: "She committed suicide five years ago. And that's something no one ever released to the news. Far as the rest of the world knows, she just up and disappeared. So you can make yourself a nice chunk of change if you sell that dirty little secret to the tabloids."

"I promise I won't." I said, twisting my fingers nervously in the scarf.

And Sonic just nodded, halfway disbelieving me. I broke eye contact and looked at the pattern of threads in my scarf. "Suicide." I breathed.

"Sometimes I think she had the right idea." I looked back up at him, and he was staring at the wall again. He blinked to keep the tears back and took a deep breath of smoke. After releasing it, he whispered, "but, I'm not as brave as everyone makes me out to be."

I had no clue how to react to that. I just said what was on my mind. "The world needs you."

"So I've been told." Said Sonic. His eyes looked almost-dry by now. I wondered if he cried for his friends a lot at the beginning. I wondered if he'd taught himself not to cry. It made me feel sorry for him. But I had a feeling I couldn't understand the kind of sadness he lived with. I felt dirty and wanted to leave and wanted to talk to him for hours at the same time.

"Are you lonely?" I asked.

He eyed me seriously. "Not the kind of lonely girls seem to think."

That shut me up. He put the cigarette in his mouth and collected his shirt from the corner of the bed. He slipped his arms in and buttoned it up. The whole time puffing away at the cancer stick in his mouth. I tried to think of what else there was to say to him. "You're nothing like how you act on TV."

"If you hadn't noticed, Miss," he sounded sarcastic. "I haven't been on TV in a _long _time. 'Sides, people change. I'm too old for this shit."

"You're only twenty-six." I said.

"Grew up fast, got old fast." Sonic said, analyzing the stub left of his cigarette. He put it out beside the first one. I noticed for the first time there were several butts there.

"Do you want to know my name?" I asked him, as he walked around the edge of the bed to my side. He stopped in front of me and took my scarf.

"No." He said and threw the scarf up. It landed around my shoulders. "It makes it harder to forget somebody when you know their name. 'Sides, I thought you weren't good with introductions."

"But - That's not fair." I said, not meeting his eyes and refusing to let my lungs cough their hearts out at the intense smell of nicotine up close. I wondered why I didn't notice it on him before. "I know YOUR name."

Sonic smirked and laughed shortly. "No you don't."

He tied my scarf snugly around my neck. Then he walked back to his side of the room and collected his clothes from the dresser. He bundled up quickly and turned back to me. "I'm sorry I was so harsh on you. Every once in a while...I guess I get fed up with people. Especially people who are happy to see me. If I'm ever around for more than a day, it's 'cause someone got hurt."

All I can do is nod at that. I want to apologize again. I still feel used, but also...I don't know. He lit up another cigarette and took a breath of it.

"Now, come on," he held out his hand to me, "I'll walk you home."


End file.
